Ahhh, another beautiful Mexican morning.  After a gorgeous breakfast overlooking the Sea of Cortez, my husband and I came back to the villa (I really can’t call it a “room,” because that’s just not what it is…) with those niños I told you about yesterday.  Emily invited me out onto the balcony to journal with her.  How could I resist?

She’s currently sitting across the table from me with paper and pen writing a poem about a strong merman named Draco who played with the mermaid clan (seriously, can’t make this stuff up!), complete with illustrations, while I type this little diddy out for you.

The poem about Draco the merman is probably better, but sorry, you’re stuck with me until Emily gets her own blog.

Anyway, as I look across the table at this sweet girl this morning, I’m reminded 1) of how much I love her and 2) how since I first met her, it seems I’ve made every effort to destroy her.

Yes, I said destroy…

I am ashamed.  But I am going to tell you anyway.

I first met Emily when she was a mere 18 months old.  Communicative, yes.  But 18 months, nevertheless.  That’s ONE.  She was one year old.  (Remember that, it’s important.)

I met Emily the same time I first met her parents and I was suuuuper nervous.  This was my boyfriend’s boss (we weren’t married, or even engaged, at the time– yes, we were living in sin.  You would too if you lived in a place with rents like DC…) and his wife, flying all the way to DC from California.

Boss man.  His wife.  From California, like where people in movies live.  Terrifying.  I was sure they were going to be amazing… and that they were going to realize that I was not.

Turns out, Chris and Melissa were just as awesome.com as I had expected, but in a totally accessible kind of way.  They were just so nice and their little girl was just so sweet that I let my guard down.  I forgot to be nervous for a minute and disaster struck.

Chris and Melissa related to me how much Emily liked things like rocks and sea shells and I got super excited because I also love things like rocks and sea shells.  I love them so much, in fact, that I had several big mason jars full of them in our spare bedroom.  Because I wanted Emily to think I was cool and I wanted to show Chris and Melissa how much they should love me, I decided to go get those jars to play with Emily.

So, in my infinite wisdom and desperation to be liked, I gave a ONE YEAR OLD a GLASS jar full of ROCKS.  Which promptly broke, leaving said ONE YEAR old in the middle of a pile of BROKEN GLASS.

Child endangerment on the first friend date.  Sigh.

And yet, nearly 7 years later, we found ourselves invited to a beach house in Huntington Beach, CA for a week, where Chris and Melissa now let me spend time around BOTH of their children.  Clearly, I had them convinced that my tendency for child endangerment was a fluke.

Except this time, they gave me a fighter kite.  A FIGHTER KITE on a WINDY DAY with two child TARGETS running around the beach below. The good news is, my aim was excellent and I hit one of the targets.  The bad news is, I seriously damaged a child when I hit one of the targets.

The kite went up in the air for all of about 17.6 second before it came straight back to earth like a heat seeking missile locked onto Emily’s eyeball.  Fortunately, Emily is a Trooper with a capital T and she promptly stood up, said, “I’m ok!” and then explained that she was only crying because she was using it as a natural defense mechanism to get the sand out of her eye.  (LOVE HER!)

So the kite attack resulted in a lovely shiner and big old scrape from the outside of Emily’s right eye, across her cheek, and ending at her nose.  On the day before her last day of school.  And now, Emily has this Harry Potter style scar to remind me how I’ve marked her like Voldemort.

Who needs enemies with a friend like me?

And yet, I must be doing something right because the Lemas continue to trust me with their children.  And I must say, I am quite grateful for that because they are incredible!  And while I may be a bit nervous about damaging one or both of these awesome kids again, Chris and Melissa don’t seem terribly worried about it, and their faith in me feels pretty dang good…

Especially in Mexico 😉